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Are Humans Doomed? "Grace in their Failings"

Reflections on the Avengers: "Age of Ultron"

  • 7 March 2016
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 8294
  • 1 Comments

by Scott Cherry

People of all kinds love superhero movies—Christians, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and everyone else. This is not surprising because they have enormous power to entertain and communicate important messages all at once. I like them as much as anybody else.  As superheroes go, I really like the Avengers. The last movie, “The Age of Ultron” came out in May, 2015 and I saw it three times that year. Once I saw it with my German movie buddy Josh, then with my son, and then with my wife on DVD. I enjoyed it a lot but I heard harsh criticisms from others. In this review I'm pretty fixated on one thing.  There was a particular line from a conversation toward the end of the film that has been ringing in my ears: “There’s grace in their failings.” Through my lenses it struck me as a very profound theological statement, because grace is a very profound theological idea, especially in the Christian frame of reference.  Of course, grace can mean different things in different contexts, but this grace could only make sense in biblical terms.  It was not the kind of grace that proper ladies have, nor the kind exhibited at formal affairs or when ballroom dancing.  This grace had a much deeper meaning, I contend, one which addresses the universal need of all humanity for help and forgiveness from a greater source.   Yes, a lot of inference is required.

CSI Palestine, part 1

The Search for the Missing Corpse

  • 7 March 2016
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 7674
  • 0 Comments

In 33 AD, Palestine was the Roman name for the geographical region encompassing Judea and Galilee at that time over which the Romans were firmly in control of their Jewish and other Levantine subjects. I call this a CSI story because it focuses on the human capacity and function of forensic reason that is required to solve perplexing crimes such as some murders, abductions and others are. Based on actual historical events of the early first century and documented by histor- ians of the day, that's the kind of story this is. It masterfully depicts the reality of worldview presuppositions at work, and the application of both inductive and deductive reason that are unavoidably relied upon to unravel mysteries of this nature within the complex Judeo-Roman milieu.

"All Men Desire to Know" saith Aristotle

Medieval Philosophy and Existential Epistemology

  • 3 April 2016
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 10810
  • 2 Comments
by Scott Cherry, part 1

This paper explores the problems of human knowledge stemming from the medieval era to the present. In it I will grapple with the elusive question of the justification of knowledge that goes all the way back to Aristotle in the 4th century BC and beyond. Aristotle is a good subject to start with since in a real sense he was a medieval philosopher insofar as he was “reincarnated” into a Latin-speaking Europe that previously knew very little of his ideas until his writings were reintro- duced there. “For Aristotle…epistemology is based on the study of particular phenomena and rises to the knowledge of essences.” He believed that we can know things, and I agree. In this paper I argue that we can know things and know that we know them. Further, epistemology as a branch of philosophy is valid only when it includes the existential domain, i.e. data that is received through the senses. Perception and experience must not be proscribed, for they are God's means by which we know.

CSI Palestine, part 2

"A day without death." (continued from March 7)

  • 11 April 2016
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 15841
  • 0 Comments

In 1st-century Roman Palestine it had been almost two weeks since the tomb of the executed Jesus was found empty. The New Testament narratives and other historical accounts tell us there were reports of some who claimed to have seen him alive and believed he had risen from the dead. True or not, in some sense Jesus was still causing trouble for Pontius Pilate and the Jewish authorities. They unmistakably killed him and needed him to stay dead to squash the uproar he had created. In the 2016 film Risen, a Roman centurion named Clavius was forced to become a detective to find the missing corpse and was reeling from the shock of his discovery that this crucified Jesus of Nazareth may not be actually dead at all. In part 1 of this piece (2 down) I tried to give you a grasp of the plotline of Risen and some broad brushstrokes about its themes. Now I want to go deeper. Recall the last sentence of part 1 in which I said “…what started as his problem became his salvation.” 


Luke Got His Facts Straight

The Historical Reliability of the Writings of Luke the Historian

  • 3 June 2016
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 11434
  • 1 Comments

 

Recently someone told me, "History is history". I think he probably meant that history is just facts, not conjecture. It struck me because there are skeptics of history who think we can know almost nothing about the past. Apparently this person was not one of those. Since it was not the main thread of our discussion I took it at face value. But if this is even a partly true statement, it is as true of Christianity as much as any other subject of history. 

by Scott Cherry


This is an article I wrote originally as the introduction for a series of posts for a Facebook group called "The Bridge". The series is called "The History of Christianity".  Its focus is exclusively on the formative years of Christianity and its small number of primary founders in the 1st century only.  Every history relies on sources, and Christianity is no exception.  My source is the historian Luke. First I will introduce Luke, and next I will introduce a modern historian, Sir William Ramsay, to tell us more about Luke and the credibility of Luke's writings.         

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